Kindred Hospital gives Cy-Fair patients time to recoup

By Chevall Pryce, Staff writer

Published
2:18 pm CST, Saturday, November 10, 2018

Kindred Hospital celebrated its 25th anniversary with a ribbon cutting hosted by the Cy-Fair Houston Chamber of Commerce. CEO Tracy Kohler helped cut the ribbon and gave a speech in honor of the staff.

Kindred Hospital celebrated its 25th anniversary with a ribbon cutting hosted by the Cy-Fair Houston Chamber of Commerce. CEO Tracy Kohler helped cut the ribbon and gave a speech in honor of the staff.

Photo: Chevall Pryce

Photo: Chevall Pryce

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Kindred Hospital celebrated its 25th anniversary with a ribbon cutting hosted by the Cy-Fair Houston Chamber of Commerce. CEO Tracy Kohler helped cut the ribbon and gave a speech in honor of the staff.

Kindred Hospital celebrated its 25th anniversary with a ribbon cutting hosted by the Cy-Fair Houston Chamber of Commerce. CEO Tracy Kohler helped cut the ribbon and gave a speech in honor of the staff.

Photo: Chevall Pryce

Kindred Hospital gives Cy-Fair patients time to recoup

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After 25 years in the Cy-Fair area, Kindred Hospital Houston Northwest has not only given patients long-term care but built a family within its walls.

Kindred Hospital, originally established in 1993, is a long-term acute care, or LTAC, hospital specializing in patients needing extra care for lasting medical issues, including respiratory failure, as well as following up with patients after they arrive home.

Tracy Kohler, market CEO for the northwest and Tomball locations of Kindred Hosptial, said the mission of Kindred Hospital is to help local community members with long-term medical needs. Kohler has been an employee with Kindred Hospital for 18 years, beginning as the director of education before eventually becoming CEO.

“Our mission is about hope, healing and recovery,” she said. “Those patients who can't heal very quickly take a little bit longer, and that's okay. It gives them hope and it gives them a longer time to recover.”

Kindred Hospital offers most services that short-term acute care hospitals in the area offer, minus labor services or an emergency room, Kohler said. According to a facility fact sheet, Kindred Hospital has 196 beds total, including beds for ICU and private beds, sepsis wound care, a lab, a rapid response call team and more.

Penelope Wilson, area director of business development for the northwest and Tomball locations of Kindred Hosptial, said the Kindred Hospital and their physicians work with local short-term acute care hospitals, like Cy-Fair Medical Center.

“The physicians that practice here also practice at Kindred and they understand the types of patients that need a little bit more time to get better,” she said. “When they do, it's a tremendous investment in their care because the patients typically have a lot of comorbidities that are pretty medically complex and in some cases, critically ill.”

Along with giving patients time to recover on-site, Kindred Hospital follows up with patients for after care, including the equipment and medication they need. The hospital will follow up with patients at home for as long as 90 days, Kohler said.

“Kindred actually has a service where we call them to make sure their home health's arrived and if it's in 24 hours, 48 hours, 7 days, 14 days, 30 and it goes out to 60 and 90 days to make sure that they're taken care of,” she said.

Kindred Hospital is one of 28 hospitals in the United States with Joint Commission certification for the management of respiratory failure. Kohler said this achievement is important to the community, considering many patients come in with respiratory failure issues and stay at Kindred Hospital for an extended amount of time.

“We noticed respiratory failure was a big issue for us,” she said. “When we went for joint commission certification for respiratory failure, that's huge for our level. When we got our certification, we were one of 20 in the nation.”

Kohler said the reason many employees stay with the company and patients choose the LTAC over others is due to the care given to both groups. During a ribbon cutting celebrating the 25th anniversary of Kindred Hosptial’s opening, held Nov. 1, and hosted by the Cy-Fair Houston Chamber of Commerce, many community members attended to support the hospital and reminisce over pictures of past years.

“When you take care of each other, why would you want to leave?” Kohler said. “When we say every moment counts, it's from one act of kindness. Passing it on and passing it forward and paying it forward. A lot of times we forget about our coworkers who are our work family. We spend so much time with our work family that we have to take care of our work family and take care of our patients because it is a calling for us and our physicians are the ones that have our back.”